Bartender reveals the ‘number one’ rule customers should NEVER break when going out for drinks: ‘Save yourself the embarrassment’
It’s also easy to get a little, shall we say, relaxed when you’re hanging out at a bar, whether it’s your local drinking spot or an exciting new spot in town.
But one thing is certain, according to bartender Joshua: fingering the garnishes, no matter how tantalizing they may seem, is never okay.
‘Bar rule No. 1. Don’t touch the garnishes. For God’s sake, please don’t touch the garnishes,” the San Francisco bartender declared on TikTok.
Joshua posted the bar-specific PSA in response to another video in which a customer revealed he helped himself to an orange behind the bar, but ended up being charged $12 for the “stolen orange” on his check.
Joshua, a bartender from San Francisco, used TikTok to remind his viewers to never touch garnishes on the bar
He felt compelled to share the bar-specific PSA in response to a separate video of a man being charged $12 for a “stolen orange” he took from a bowl of oranges on the bar.
Speaking about the perspective of working at the bar, Joshua shared his own anecdote about a previous customer’s accidental garnish contamination, from his days at a Tiki bar.
“I got a row of twelve garnishes right in front of my bar,” he remembers of the setup.
‘Now the garnishes are placed so close to my bar that the customer, when he comes in and sits in front of the bar, has to understand that he is not allowed to touch it.
“That’s for the bartender to touch. Because the bartender picks up those garnishes, puts them in the cocktail and then hands them to the customer,” he describes.
‘Once the customer has the cocktail in hand, he can do whatever he wants with the garnishes.’
Eventually, a “nice group of people” show up.
‘We have a good conversation. We have good energy,” he recalled of the initial atmosphere.
“The lady sitting in front of me, especially from this group, becomes confident after a conversation, reaches in, takes a nutmeg from my bowl and says, ‘Oh, what’s this for?’
Joshua didn’t want to embarrass her – “because she was so nice, and the rest of her group was nice,” he said.
“I wanted to be polite, right? And I just said, “Ma’am, that’s actually for me to grate over my cocktails, that’s all.” So she says, “Oh, I’m sorry.” And puts the nutmeg back in the ram.
Of course, Joshua had to throw away the nutmeg to prevent cross-contamination.
“I can’t use it anymore,” he emphasized.
‘But I was discreet about it because I didn’t want to embarrass him. But I thought she would have understood: don’t touch the garnishes.’
Joshua also regaled his viewers with a story from his days working at a Tiki bar, when a woman grabbed herself a whole nutmeg from a ramiken on the bar and bit into it, chipping a tooth.
The women went back to her group and looked like they were still “having a good time,” Joshua recalled, adding that she and her group were still chatting with him here and there.
About twenty minutes later he received an order for seven cocktails, which demanded his full attention, so he stopped paying attention to the woman and her group.
‘While I have everything in order, and I measure my rum and shake my lemon and my syrups out of the corner of my eye, I see her go in and take another nutmeg from my ramiken, a full one.
Turns to her group and says, “Have you ever thought what it would be like to eat one of these?” And pops it in her mouth like an M&M.
“Mind you, this all happened in the space of three seconds, and I didn’t really have time to react.
“When she puts it in, she bites it, breaks her tooth and lets out a little squeak, like, ‘Oh!’
“At that point, I’m still building my cocktails. And I was on a break… and I had to look at the other bartender and say, ‘Can you come finish this?’” Joshua continued.
‘Cause I’m bursting out laughing now, and it will be embarrassing for all of us, myself included.
“So I had to go to the back, it made me laugh. Because the screaming took me out,” he admitted that he was amused by the woman’s misstep.
“But the point where the moral of the story is: don’t touch your garnishes, right?
“You’ll save yourself the embarrassment of a bartender telling you ‘No,’ and possibly the embarrassment of cracking your tooth on a nutmeg, and then we’ll have a good time,” he concluded.
A shocking number of people seemed to think that bartenders shouldn’t leave garnish ingredients where customers can get them in the first place
Still, many other commenters felt that adult cafe patrons should know better than to assume that food within their reach is free for the taking.
Many viewers took to the comments section, with a surprising number claiming that the garnishes should be kept out of reach of customers, rather than expecting adult bar patrons to exercise common sense and self-control.
“You’re wrong, the garnish should be out of reach,” one wrote.
“This is a wild idea, don’t put your trimmings where people can reach them,” echoed a second.
‘If there is a plate of fruit on a table where people are eating, it is usually for them. put it behind the counter,” a third suggested.
Still others agreed that bar patrons — including the man who should have been charged $12 for the orange he helped himself to — should have better judgment than touching unsolicited food in a public location.
‘Who would just grab something from the bar and think it was free?’ one pointed out.
A second agreed: ‘These comments are WILD, don’t touch things that aren’t yours.’
“After reading the comments I’m convinced you all haven’t been to a bar b4,” a third joked about the shocking number of people who seemed to think that as customers they would have the right to touch or eat what is inside their arm. range.